In vitro cultivation of Wolbachia pipientis in an Aedes albopictus cell line

A continuous cell line, Aa23, was established from eggs of a strain of the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus , naturally infected with the intracellular symbiont Wolbachia pipientis . The resulting cell line was shown to be persistently infected with the bacterial endosymbiont. Treatment with a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Insect molecular biology 1997-02, Vol.6 (1), p.33-39
Main Authors: O'Neill, S. L., M. Pettigrew, M., Sinkins, S. P., Braig, H. R., Andreadis, T. G., Tesh, R. B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aedes - cytology
Aedes albopictus
Animals
Cell Line
Culicidae
Rickettsiaceae - growth & development
Wolbachia pipientis
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Summary:A continuous cell line, Aa23, was established from eggs of a strain of the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus , naturally infected with the intracellular symbiont Wolbachia pipientis . The resulting cell line was shown to be persistently infected with the bacterial endosymbiont. Treatment with antibiotics cured the cells of the infection. In the course of establishing this cell line it was noticed that RFLPs in the PCR products of two Wolbachia genes from the parental mosquitoes were fixed in the infected cell line. This indicates that the mosquito host was naturally superinfected with different Wolbachia strains, whereas the infected cell line derived from these mosquitoes only contained one of the original Wolbachia strains. The development of an in vitro culture system for this fastidious microorganism should facilitate molecular analysis of the reproduction distorting phenotypes it induces in natural arthropod hosts.
ISSN:0962-1075
1365-2583
DOI:10.1046/j.1365-2583.1997.00157.x